Sunday, July 26, 2009

London to Norfolk day

I'm up early because I slept enough, and because I want to go to church. I haven't found Jesus; I've found medieval buildings that let you in to do real things. They have art, bells, architecture, music. (Not medieval music, but I'll take pipe organ and 19th century hymns as an alternative.)

The nearest church doesn't have a Sunday service. The next-nearest church is about five blocks away into a rich neighborhood.

I found the photo on the internet. I'm surprised I didn't find more or better. It's in between streets when Bolton splits, near the bottom of the map. The church that's close is in the upper rightLEFT (sorry), and we're halfway up Harrington Gardens about the center top of this map, on the north side.

The alley in back of the hotels is perfect cobblestone, and nobody sees it. It's like sexy cobblestone underwear.

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The church was less than 200 years old but beautiful roof and awesome ceiling. There were only seven people there. NO MUSIC. But that made the service short, so I made it back to the hotel in time for breakfast.

We're back, I'm tired, I slept most of the way home in the train. Later, photos...There was only one guy at speaker's corner. Talking about religion. Said let God be your steering wheel, not your spare wheel. I guess in the U.S. "speaker's corner" is the "low church" protestant pulpit. And in the world in general, maybe speaker's corner is moving onto the internet.

2 comments:

It was cool, though, and I was sitting there thinking about how much the Victorians loved the Middle Ages, and that this was their attempt to make a medieval church, like with new plaster, not 500 year old plaster, and such.

Not all the windows were stained glass. Some were leaded small panes, which is also beautiful. But the stained glass they had was really beautiful.

Had there been a larger congregation, I could've looked around more, but I felt obligated to leave while the minister was still waiting at the back, and wasn't in the mood to talk about being an American and why I was here, and so I zoomed around up front looking at things and then zoomed back to leave without saying more than "just for the weekend," and headed back.

Had the Victorians not been so worshipful of medieval art and architecture, I bet there would be less of it around.

As to God, the young priest at Carleton Rode and the group of fifteen or so mostly older people (two young women and two children) managed to invoke and evoke God better, for me. And he was lively and interesting and the sermon was on St. Swithin, and they sang four hymns. I don't think he was a vicar. He was a temp. I don't know the terminology for a temp on rotation.